The classroom environment
A comfortable setting
In order to facilitate this new teacher-learner relationship, based on a deeper understanding of the learning process and the most efficient way of transferring knowledge, both learners and teachers need to meet in an appropriate environment. Firstly, given that mental activity is more often than not practiced in a seated position, learners and teachers need to be seated comfortably, freeing their minds from distractions related to physical discomfort. This is why we use work place arm chairs in our English language training centre.
Again, I order to conserve and strengthen this new teacher-learner relationship, each person's interaction with the teaching environment must be fair. If teachers are allowed to move about, then learners must also be permitted. If teachers drink coffee during lessons, then learners must also be permitted to drink. The pedagogical setting must reflect the balance between learners and teachers in their relationship now based on empat
A new environment
There are numerous benefits to creating a classroom setting that is far from the 'traditional' school environment, especially for learners and teachers who may have had tense relationships in the past. This change stimulates a new dynamic learning process. This is why our training centre looks like more like a comfortable living room rather than a traditional school classroom.
A minimalist environment with only the strictly necessary
Teachers and learners need to feel comfortable with their surroundings and not caged in by furniture or rarely used objects, unnecessary in the teaching and learning processes. The most important element needed in these processes must logically be at the centre of the classroom setting. If learning and teaching centre around fabricating objects, then a work bench would be at the heart of the classroom. If, as is the case with foreign language learning, it's the learner's brain that is at the heart of the process (since learners will be reflecting on their mental abilities and functions rather than on writing or physical creation), then tables and desks become cumbersome. They even hinder communication during the pedagogical process, since they not only create a physical separation between teachers and learners, but are also redundant during teacher-learner brain activity, which manifests itself through thought and not through writing.
The physical space created by removing the tables allows for the professional armchairs to be positioned in a circle, which further facilitates the new teacher-learner relationship, where both are on the same terms, focused on the same goal: a comprehension of each learner's brain.
The same applies to the blackboard (traditional or interactive). If the main axes for the transmission and reception of knowledge is mental reflecting, then writing on a board can be rather distracting. When using the Technique Leader Harrison© in the classroom, neither learners nor teachers need to write (this does not mean that learners never see written English or learn to write in English).
Thus, from this perspective, the use of the blackboard for pedagogical reasons has become obsolete in our classroom, along with learner exercise books.
It's the teacher who must establish what is really essential or superficial in their teaching practice by questioning the utility of each object present in their classrooms. If as teachers, our answers resemble these: “Because I was told to do things like that”, or “Because it suits me”, then we must realise that our teaching practice is either based on someone else's instructions (which entails the transfer of our responsibility at the same time) or on our own needs. In both cases, our learners' real needs, which are the development of an understanding of their own brain workings, are relegated to second position. This posture destabilises the teacher-learner relationship and leads to catastrophic results, in both the domain of learner retrieval ability and on a psychological front for learners and teachers.
A new environment that encourages pedagogical responsibility
If teachers now consciously create the pedagogical environment by choosing and placing each physical element found within it, keeping the notion of usefulness in mind (in allowing learners to develop brain function self awareness), then they must apply the same ethos to the tasks required of learners. If these activities have been chosen to simply facilitate the teacher's workload or to entertain learners, but are not essential in the learning process, then these activities are again considered to be superficial. Teachers will have to pursue the same line of self questioning as before when considering the physical make-up of the classroom: Are the written classroom exercises I give to learners mainly to occupy them, to allow me to take a break, to calm the class down and are they the most efficient way of instigating cerebral self reflection? Depending on the answers (which must be totally honest to be useful), teachers will be able to rectify their initial choices by repositioning themselves in a way that will benefit the pedagogical goal.
It is essential that teachers become aware of their responsibility in the initial creation and maintaining of this new pedagogical relationship with learners, which essentially evolves around a deep reflection on their own teaching practice. If the pedagogical goal is to encourage learners to reflect upon their own cerebral functions, then teachers must inspire learners by example. This means that during the self reflection process on the initial choice of learner activities and tasks, teachers must not overlook the reasons behind their choices (which will inevitably lead them to a close examination of what is really at the heart of their teaching practice : learner well being, their own well being, parent well being, the curriculum, knowledge, self understanding of one's own cerebral function...).
In the same way as mistakes are essential for encouraging brain function comprehension, mistakes in pedagogical choices are stimuli that allow teachers a better understanding of themselves through their teaching practice. It's through a greater comprehension of our teaching practice that we can accept our implicit responsibility in our students' abilities to learn given that we are the guides who will enable them to better understand the way their brain functions.
